Forbidden Fruit
by settler
Summary: For months, Galactica was without fresh fruit.


**Background**: Written around a poem entitled "Apple", by Susan Stewart (published in her anthology _Columbarium_, University of Chicago Press, 2003). I really like this poem, which is unusual, because I'm an old-school kind of girl, and most contemporary poetry doesn't do much for me.

So... I have taken her poem totally out of context, excerpted random parts of it, and made a BSG fic around it. Bastardization is the highest form of flattery, I tell you!

**Forbidden Fruit  
**

_If I could come back from the dead, I would come back_

_for an apple, and just for the first bite, the first _

_break, and the cold sweet grain_

_against the roof of the mouth, as plain_

_and clear as water._

For months, Galactica was without fresh fruit. Cloud Nine had started out with a sizable supply, but it had all been irradiated to keep out pests, and as a result, the seeds wouldn't germinate. They'd tried to get Baltar to find a way around that, but he hadn't been able to pull it off. In Kara's book, that was another reason to hate him. She knew it wasn't rational, but then hatred rarely ever was.

So when she went down to Caprica and saw that the apple orchard near her old apartment was full of fruiting trees, she'd clambered up their limbs to get the best ones. She'd ended up saving more fruit than she saved resistors, though she tries not to think about it that way.

When she returns, the President gets a hold of some of her store, and talks to the horticulturists on one of the agri ships, and they work their miracles, and in nine months (a third the time it normally takes, they tell her proudly) Kara finds herself the recipient of the first fruits of their labors.

They can be refrigerated to keep fresh longer, and eventually there are enough trees that they bear fruit at different times. But there are never quite enough to make the apples into anything other than a luxury. They simply don't have enough space for an orchard large enough to keep 50,000 or so people stocked with fruit.

They bet socks and cigars and towels at the triad table now that credits mean next to nothing, but they never bet apples. Some things are just sacred.

She listens to the wireless and hears saccharine-sweet tales of lovers and how hard it is to get a ring these days. Kara privately thinks that apples are even more precious, because they don't last. After the end of the worlds, she has developed a healthy appreciation for transient beauty (be it the flash of Lee's smile or the explosion of a raider). Or maybe it's just that she's had her fill of rings. She thought once that her ring was the only thing she had left of Zak Adama, but she knows now that that's not true. She has his father. She has his brother, though she tries not to dwell on that too deeply, because that way danger lies.

The day she's down to her last apple, the cylons come and almost shoot Lee out of the sky. He's trying to protect the nuggets, and she can't even yell at him for it, because it's his job. Part of her hates him for it though, because she's used to losing nuggets by now, but she quite wrap her mind around the idea of losing him.

She keeps the cylons from striking a killing blow, mostly by virtue of pulling more g's than is wise, but his ship is so damaged that he has to eject.

The last time that happened, he came back and told her that he didn't want to live anymore. She's not going to let that happen again.

When Helo's raptor brings him in, she's waiting on the hangar deck for him, along with his father and half the deck crew. Lee thanks her briefly, and she kisses him softly on the cheek, an unusual display of affection that puts a question into his eyes. She gives him a glance that means "we'll talk later," and he nods, probably confused about why she isn't chewing him out for almost getting himself killed.

That night as he lies in his rack, she sits next to him and balances her last apple on his chest. She can't take her eyes off it, the way it rises and falls with his breathing, so she's not sure what he thinks of her gesture.

When he sits up next to her, she's still not sure, because there's an unreadable expression on his face. It morphs into one of intense pleasure, though, when he bites into the apple. His eyes are closed. She can see his jaw working, and feel the warmth of his side pressed against hers. He looks absolutely sinful, and she starts to think that maybe this was a bad idea, but then again he doesn't look anything like a man who wants to give up, and that's exactly what she wanted.

_If I could come back from the dead, I would—_

_I'd come back for an apple,_

_and just for one bite, one break,_

_and the cold sweet grain on the tongue._

They start to give each other apples on a semi-regular basis. They're really frakking difficult to get a hold of, so she's never quite able to time her gift-giving exactly the way she wants to. Maybe it's better that way, though, because she finds that the apples he gives her are all the more welcome because she can't predict when they'll come.

She knows he gets them for her when she's feeling down, or when he's been an ass and wants to make up for it, but her moods swing so rapidly these days, and he can be _such_ an ass, that most of the time she can't quite connect the apple to the event that made him want to get it for her. It becomes its own thing, its own event.

And the giving itself becomes their way of holding each other up. Some people would probably say that that's unhealthy, that they're trying to buy their way into each other's good graces. Some people should shut the frak up, because they have no idea what they're talking about. How could they? When it comes to her relationship with Lee, Kara has no idea what she's talking about.

She does know, however, that the apples aren't a way for them to buy themselves out of trouble. If Lee really wants to apologize for something, he gives her a cigar, or stares at her with a contrite look in those baby blues of his until she rolls her eyes and shoves him. It's more to reestablish contact with him than to berate him, and he understands that. He knows from first-hand experience that when she hits someone in anger, she does it a hell of a lot harder.

Sometimes, if the offense is grave enough, Lee even actually says he's sorry, but that's only in the most serious of cases, because he knows that it makes her uncomfortable.

She hardly ever says that she's sorry, but she goes out of her way to make sure he knows she is before she gives him an apple. Some couples have a rule that they can't go to bed angry. They're not a couple, and she's not very good at keeping rules, but she still makes a point to make sure things are okay between them before he gets his fruit.

No, the apples aren't a way for them to buy themselves out of trouble, or tokens of affection, or some strange little contest between them. They're part all those things, but there's something else there as well. Kara knows this because she's never eaten an apple from Lee without him being there to watch her do it, and vice versa.

Racetrack caught them once, tucked in the corner of a dead-end hallway. Lee had caught her in the middle of her run and presented her with the reddest apple she'd ever seen. The horticulturists had been breeding new strains, apparently, and Lee had managed to get himself one of the first hybrids. He had been in full dress blues, well-coifed and poised as ever, and she had been in tanks and shorts, slick with sweat. They had sat down, she against the bulkhead and he facing her, and she had waited for her breathing to even out before she took her first bite. It had tasted heavenly, and she might have moaned a bit.

Then Racetrack had found them, stuttered something, turned around, and almost run the other way. Lee had blushed, and that's when Kara had realized the picture they must have made, Lee drinking in the sight of a sweaty, moaning woman, eyes intent on her mouth while her own eyes were closed in an expression of bliss.

_There is so little difference between_

_an apple and a kiss, between desire_

_and the taste of desire._

_Anyone who tell you other-_

_wise is a liar, as bad_

_as a snake in the quiet grass. _

She can't do this, can't stare temptation in the mouth like this and not give in. Most people think that being Starbuck means she doesn't run from anything. That's because she has most people fooled. She knows better, and Lee knows better too, and neither of them are entirely surprised when the next time she gives him an apple, she runs away after his first two bites.

It's not a graceful get-away either. She doesn't even have time to mumble an excuse or crack a joke. She exits senior officer's quarters at a dead run, her flight suit scrunched around her waist, with such urgency that Hot Dog asks her if there's an alert that he's missed.

She ends up swapping CAP rotations with Kat, just so she can get immediately into her Viper. Her hands are shaking, so she grabs the stick harder than she should. She orders her nuggets to cut the comm chatter, and spends the next three hours out in space, trying to decide what she's supposed to be feeling. All she succeeds in doing is clearing her mind of everything, which is fine for when she's flying, but helps her not at all when she's back aboard Galactica and her confusion rises up again as soon as her feet hit the deck.

She doesn't like to analyze things, that's Lee's job, and usually that works out just fine for them, because they balance each other out. He over-thinks, she acts too brashly, and they're one big co-dependent frakked-up unit, which actually works out a lot better than it sounds like it should.

There's a barrier between them now, though, and she's not quite sure what to do to overcome it. They're not fighting, per say, so she can't wait for his hurt and his anger to boil up and then smack it out of him like she usually does. She thinks that if she hadn't broken first, he would have done much the same thing she did, only he would have tried to talk about it, and that would have ended up even worse, because if she's not allowed to use her fists, she's horrible at expressing her deeper emotions. She has to be doing something else with her body in order to force the words out, and that means either fighting or frakking. The first would be counter-productive, and the second is exactly what she's trying to avoid in the first place, which is damn frustrating because she's Starbuck, and she's not used to holding herself back from something she wants so much.

The worst thing is, if she gives him another apple, she's pretty sure things will go back to the way they were, but that would solve nothing. Out of the box thinking is not going to help her here, she's well and truly trapped.

Then she catches him "demonstrating" sparring techniques with Dee and is totally and completely unprepared for the wave of anger that washes over her. She's no stranger to moments of pure rage, and she's got the hack record to prove it, but this one is tinged with too much regret to be excised by a good fight. She actually physically stumbles as it hits her, but she refuses to run this time.

Something must show on her face though, because Lee goes stiff as soon as he sees her. Dualla, completely oblivious, continues with the next move in their demonstration, and ends up knocking Lee flat on his face, his arm twisted behind him, still in her grip. All three of them wince at the sharp crack of bone that accompanies his fall.

Dee apologizes profusely, and looks a little sick, and isn't quite sure what to do, so Kara kneels beside Lee and uses two slim cardboard workout schedules and one of her tanks to splint his wrist as best she can. He's curled up in a ball and in obvious pain, and he's more than a little embarrassed, so she asks Helo to get the demonstrations started again.

The nuggets look understandably nervous, but most of them are focused on Helo, which leaves her free to pet Lee's hair as he gets his breathing under control.

She helps him stand and slips under his good arm to support him through the nausea he must be feeling. He turns and buries his head in her neck for just a moment. She feels the puffs of his breath against her skin and tries not to think of the last time she felt it, apple-scented, as he looked up at her from his rack after the first bite. They get to sickbay, and Doc Cottle looks disgusted, but doesn't even try and make her leave as he sets the bones in Lee's wrist.

She has to go eventually, though. She has CAP. And she has something she has to do first.

After her rotation, she showers and changes, but instead of going back to her rack, she goes to see Lee. She brings her newly-bought apple and places it on his bedside table. He's probably too sick from the anesthesia to want it right now, and she's planned it that way. He can decide when and where and how to eat it. It puts the ball in his court, because her way of coping obviously isn't working for them, and maybe he can come up with something better.

But then he smiles at her, a genuine Lee Adama grin, and she changes her mind. Coping be damned, and she's never been very good about letting other people take the initiative anyway. She kisses him on the mouth, soft and slow, and it takes her a while to open her eyes afterward, whether because she's afraid or because she wants to savor the sensation she doesn't quite know.

But when she finds Commander Adama looking at them from the gap in the curtains drawn around Lee's bed, all she feels is relief. She doesn't look at Lee first, and she refuses to flinch or go red. She straightens and looks at Adama with clear eyes, and doesn't remove her hand from where it rests on Lee's chest.

Adama stares at them both for a long time, and they stare back. He closes his eyes briefly, nods once, and gives them a small smile. She can feel Lee's sigh of relief through her hand.

_You can watch out for the snake and the lie._

_But the grass, the green green wave _

_of it, there below the shadows of the black_

_and twisted boughs, will not be_

_what you thought it would be. _


End file.
